As the popularity and accessibility of computer networks continue to increase, it has become common for retail merchants to set up online “stores” for marketing and selling products. Typically, an online store includes a web-based or other electronic catalog of products that are available for purchase. Users browse the catalog using well known navigational tools to locate and purchase products of interest.
Electronic systems that support user-to-user sales of products have also become popular. These user-to-user sales systems typically include an electronic server system, such as a web site or an online services network, that provides services for users to list products for sale to, and purchase products from, other users. Sellers in such systems typically include both small merchants and non-merchant individuals. Existing user-to-user sales systems typically support fixed-price sales, auctions, or both. Product listings can typically be located using a search engine. In some cases, the user-to-user sales system is operated in association with an online retail store such that a customer can search a retail catalog, as well as a database of product listings from users, via a single search query.
User-to-user sales systems have the potential to attract large numbers of users, thereby potentially generating large and varied product listings of both new and used products. However, such systems commonly suffer from a number of deficiencies. For example, existing systems typically rely on sellers to supply descriptions of the products they are selling. The task of creating marketplace listings can therefore be cumbersome—particularly for small sellers. For example, to create an effective listing, the seller typically must obtain and upload a detailed product description and image.
In addition, different sellers in an online marketplace will often use very different terminology to describe identical products. As a result, buyers seeking certain products often fail to find relevant listings, and sometimes become overwhelmed in less-relevant listings. Further, small sellers sometimes fail to fully and accurately describe their products, resulting in lost sales and/or erroneous purchases. Further, unlike the retail listings in some online stores, marketplace listings typically do not include customer ratings, customer and professional reviews, sales rank data, and other types of product-related data provided by sources other than the sellers.
Some user-to-user sales systems seek to address the above problems by allowing a seller to specify a UPC (Universal Product Code) or other product identifier of a product being listed. This allows the system to associate all of the seller listings for a particular product. Typically, however, the seller must know or look up the correct product identifier in order to create such a listing.
Embodiments of the present invention seek to overcome some or all of the above and other problems.